IGN FilmForce talks to the highly animated duo.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is not your average little movie. But that's okay, Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer are not your average actors. In writer/director Shane Black's new action/thriller/comedy/hard-boiled detective story, the rules of the game are paid homage too, mocked, then turned on their head. Kilmer plays a gay private eye affectionately known as Gay Perry. Downey, Jr. is an unwitting fellow named Harry who accidentally stumbles into Perry's world. Harry may talk tough and look confident at first, but it's really Gay Perry who's the muscle. Michelle Monaghan is the curvy seductress with the cute face.

Almost as if they had simply strolled into the Four Seasons directly from the Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang set, the pair of respected, gifted actors played off each other like a perfectly planned routine. FilmForce tried their best to keep up, but Downey, Jr. and Kilmer often took the reigns for a bit themselves and conducted their own interview.

KILMER: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Four Seasons. [Kilmer motions to Robert Downey, Jr., who enters behind him] Robert Downey Jr. If there was something that you liked in the film, I wrote it. And if you were just marking time, Robert wrote it. Shane did nothing.

Q: What was it like for you two to kiss each other?

KILMER: I loved it. He complained, complained, complained.

DOWNEY: I did.

Q: What was bad about it?

KILMER: The tongue. Well he smokes, he chain smokes. No breath mints.

DOWNEY: He smelled like the breath of a jackal.

KILMER: Not true, not true.

DOWNEY: I don't know why he saved jackal breath for our kissing scene.

KILMER: It was fine, it was fine. I've never kissed a guy before except for Colin Farrell in a movie.

Q: But that was father and son.

KILMER: Yeah, so that was weird when he slipped me the tongue. And Robert is a better kisser… I think he bit my lip. He's angry.

DOWNEY: What's the movie we did together last year?

KILMER: I don't remember.

DOWNEY: Why don't we talk about that? Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

KILMER: Oh, you want to talk about it because you're the lead.

Q: Robert's the lead, but you save the day.

DOWNEY: He does, steals the movie.

KILMER: I don't. Oh, I take a bullet...

DOWNEY: Val Kilmer is the happiest person I have ever seen on a set. He is basically having a day and there happens to be a movie being shot as well. It's great, it's that kind of detachment that we all, you know.

KILMER: Well it was the role as well. My guy is in control, he just doesn't like you. That's about it, right? And I loved Michelle.

DOWNEY: We love Michelle. We loved Shane too by the way. We're pleased as punch with this.

KILMER: I am happy with Shane because you already knew you were good, but Shane didn't know he was good.

Q: Do you know anyone like your character, that kind of down on his luck guy?

DOWNEY: I was in New York in Hell's Kitchen on the phone, somehow someone had actually paid the bill that month; probably my roommate John Melfi who now produces Sex and the City or did produce, talking to Sarah Jessica Parker and she goes, 'What are you doing? What's your place like?' I said 'It's a loft, I'm just making a little quiche.' Hung up the phone I was like Riggs in Lethal Weapon and I got called up to LA, so I didn't have to steal from shoe stores or work in clubs anymore.

KILMER: You worked in clubs?

DOWNEY: Yeah, you knew I stole from shoe stores.

Q: What do you think of the twist on the leading male action hero?

DOWNEY: I think it's timely. I think it's difficult and unfair for people to imagine that they are supposed to relate to these unflappable, almost, the ideals have been pretty high. Post-war stuff, even like our Dad's seem like these guys who were just tougher and cooler and saw more and were more capable than we were and it's not that kind of party. I'm not saying that 'Harry' is a dummy but he is someone who essentially is…

KILMER: I'm saying he's a dummy. I'm saying that straight up. At least the way you played him. That was very, very satisfying just to watch Robert who is so smart, have to be squished into this simple character. You just had to take it everyday, didn't you?

DOWNEY: Yeah, I didn't mind. I'm a lot more stupid than I knew. [Laughs]

Q: So we keep reading about how you guys really hit it off.

KILMER: Don't you hate that?

DOWNEY: Wouldn't it be great if we never spoke? That's the Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang version after everything I go 'You are a son of a bitch.' He goes 'You blow me.'

Q: How was Shane directing for the first time?

KILMER: He is very calm. I probably went to Robert immediately when I saw it was calm bordering on comatose. I thought well he's deer in the headlights, he's frozen, we were in trouble. It was simply that he was that well prepared and he never changed really. He never raised his voice once. And it's a frustrating job.

DOWNEY: Yes he did. I'm just going to give you the counterpoint. There is a scene where you're not in this part of the movie.

KILMER: Oh, well, that's why I don't care.

DOWNEY: My friend Flicka is at the airport and I say this and that and I get the information that keeps me from leaving town.

KILMER: She is cute.

Q: The stewardess?

DOWNEY: The stewardess, and he was trying to get her supped up for the scene and he goes 'Come on! Energy! Energy! [Lip blowing noise]' and he turns around and he walks into a key light, brings down the entire scrim. [Laughs] I mean it was like it was Buster Keaton, the whole f****** set fell down. And it was like well, uh, that would be cut. Greatest thing I ever saw.

Q: What did you guys like best about one another?

KILMER: I always like a good laugh and Robert is very, very funny. I think one of my favorite things about Robert is his observations. We'll sit with someone and have dinner and the thing that he sees in that person, their character, and I was sitting there just as long as he was and it's invariably interesting and entertaining and he usually says it in an interesting way. He's a little off today, but [Laughs] that's my favorite part.

DOWNEY: I think he makes, it's like anything, when you say, 'How did you know you guys were going to be best friends?' We didn't, you know? It happened and it was like, 'Oh we just like get each other.' And it's really nice as opposed to manufacturing chemistry or knowing it's not there and going 'Oh well, this can never work.'

Q: Robert plays a guy who is befriended by the girl he's really obsessed with. Have you ever experienced that?

DOWNEY: Been there, yep. Drew Davis was her name, Matt Dillon was her flame. [Laughs] He came back to me one day and said 'Hey Robert, I was banging Drew last night and I just don't even know if I am even that into her anymore.' I wanted to tear his eye out.

KILMER: I had a party in London and I asked Robert if he would mind if I invited Mickey Rourke and he said 'No, I don't mind. He put a hit out on me once but you can invite him.' Cause of a lady. Did you guys talk? Did you patch it up?

DOWNEY: He didn't come to the party, Val.

KILMER: He did too.

DOWNEY: Oh, well, I'd left already because I'm early to bed, early to rise.

KILMER: My first girlfriend in high school, I had a girlfriend in grade school, but my first girlfriend in high school was Mare Winningham, very fine actress. Chatsworth High, she went right out of high school, started working. Movie of the Week Queen, she was for about a decade.

Q: Val, what drew you to this part?

KILMER: Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success. Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy. They won't let you. So some that I could do just weren't interesting…

DOWNEY: I was nervous though because it was one of those things where this…

KILMER: Well, if the movie didn't work, it would be your fault.

DOWNEY: Yeah, I read Wonder Boys and I said 'Wow, this could never turn out as well as the script that I just read.' And as often as not…

KILMER: That's the Michael Douglas starrer.

DOWNEY: Yeah.

KILMER: Starrer. I'm learning the lingo.

Q: How tough is it to find longevity in this town?

KILMER: Well, I'd like to take that for both of us, Robert. It's really darn near impossible... It's a tough, tough business and there is always somebody else coming up and they will work for free and there is no baggage and everybody is excited about it, everybody wants the guy that everyone is excited about. Colin Farrell now, who is a friend, has just worked with 10 really interesting people: Michael Mann, Robert Towne, who never makes movies? Terrence Malick. Oliver Stone, those are the last four guys, I mean, you live your life to work with one of those guys once and he's just, it's been three years, they are saying he's the guy and there is always going to be another one. So for both of us, we either know people like Sean Penn who thanked the Robert Downey Jr.'s when he won an Oscar, which was very wonderful, or who have disappeared. Guys that couldn't get arrested.

Q: Val, tell us a bit about your character. I wasn't sure at first if he was good or bad.

KILMER: Yeah, he's not either. He's a little jaded now and there's a lot of guys in a lot of different departments in the film business who've got two giant forty-thousand dollar, eighty-thousand dollar trucks and a house in Hawaii and you don't even know what they do on the set. They make a very good living in the movies. He's a, you know talking through with Shane, decided that he was a good detective, but now he's got this nice niche like technical advisors do. I had one great one on a movie and one not so great one that were gun experts. The good one has probably made a million bucks now and he's only been in the movies for 10 years, having really killed people and all that.

DOWNEY: But Gay Perry says and this is another testament to Shane Black again, he says and that was the first scene we shot, 'I'm not a nice man Harry. Merry Christmas, sorry I f***** you over.' Or whatever and leaves. It's so weird that the script or, the whatever, the execution was crafted in a way where that meant something and he does have that crisis of conscious and he makes good on it.

Q: Would you guys be up for returning to these roles?

KILMER: I'd love to.

DOWNEY: No, I don't want a franchise that I'm the lead in. [Laughs]

KILMER: He gets the girl, he's funny, he's sweet.

DOWNEY: I have a feeling, this is the sh***y part, only in my world would this happen, 'Robert we're doing a sequel except this time, it's really more Perry's show. Now you work for him Robert…

KILMER: It should just be a caper though, right?

DOWNEY: Maybe, like Oceans 12.

KILMER: No, not like Oceans 12.

Q: Val, what was it like playing a gay character?

KILMER: How did it free me, is that what you want to know? [Laughs] I'm wearing red socks! [Laughs] I just laughed, it's just funny. The 3rd or 4th page once we've met and they are saying just the weirdest banter coming down the steps, I had that guy John Miller go 'I got five bucks that says you could probably still find that guy, probably get together.' I go 'Oh yeah, I got a quarter that sings Moonlight over Miami.' It's just weird dialogue. I liked it right away and I didn't really have to do that much in terms of preparation but just talk to Shane and have fun and then see what Robert was going to do, because my character is functionary to his. Those rhythms of things, if he thought that there was maybe a possible dip in the scene or we maybe needed something else, or didn't quite get something, that always happens.

DOWNEY: But Val, and I speak for both of us when I say Val, avoided that pitfall that would have been almost impossible for me to not fall in which is the camera is running, you are Gay Perry and how can you not camp it up? But when he did, it was realistic. Like it's an improvisation in our next to last scene together when he turns around. 'You bet I'll turn around, look at him, he doesn't even know he's gay.' We're following that guy down the hallway. So again it was instinctual, it came out of the character. Which is I think why it works.

KILMER: I have a very dear friend who is gay and you wouldn't know it, so I thought about him a little bit. Just his style of, he's meticulous, very well mannered and gay. I thought about him a little bit. I made one of the characters his last name. Miller.